Re: How to handle unreproducible RC bugs when the submitter is MIA?

[Thomas Hood <jdthood@yahoo.co.uk>]

> Severity: grave
> Justification: renders package unusable


At http://www.debian.org/Bugs/Developer#severities, "grave" is glossed as:

    makes the package in question unusable or mostly so, or causes
    data loss, or introduces a security hole allowing access to the
    accounts of users who use the package.

I interpret "users" here as "all users" because the "important" severity
is glossed as:

    has a major effect on the usability of a package, without
    rendering it completely unusable to everyone

which seems to be meant to contrast with "grave".  That is, if the package
isn't unusable by everyone (if the bug only affects some users) then the
bug is not grave.

If the bug is unreproducible then it can't be the case that the package is
unusable to everyone.  So I'd say that a downgrade is justified.

Of course, I may be misinterpreting the severity tags.
-- 
Thomas Hood